Thursday, August 02, 2012

The latest in the garden saga

The drama in the garden continues. After having gotten the kids all excited for ice cream and grilling in the garden this evening, what did I see in my parking space under the tree in front of my garden upon arrival? You guessed it: Canned Beer's car. Good thing for him I was the first to arrive, because there would have been trouble had the Garden Master seen this abomination. And I have to hand it to Canned Beer--he got the hell out of Dodge before the Meister rolled in. There is already a plan in place should he occupy our parking spaces: park him in!

I personally am not so worried about the parking spaces, but since he's developed a passion for brutally chopping the blossoms off of our sunflowers and placing them just over our side of the fence, some people in my garden have gotten a bit sensitive about space issues. And with each passing day, Canned Beer keeps inching further and further into our parking area. The husband of the former vice president of our garden street once loudly and angrily informed us of the parking rules in a drunken rage: You park in front of your garden and ONLY your garden. We have not forgotten.

Part two of today's saga was the silent treatment. I attempted to greet Canned Beer's girlfriend (CBGF) after we arrived as a good gardener should and it was clear that I saw her and she saw me, so I smiled and greeted. She was smoking and scowling right in my direction. What did I get? The cold shoulder and no reply. Funnily enough, some time later, I heard Kid 1 saying, "What are you doing? ... What are you doing? ... Canned Beer (he used the real name, which cannot be published here for reasons of anonymity), what are you doing? ... Are you watering your plants?" with significant pauses between for the anticipated answer, but he received no reply. This exchange, or lack of it, just about had me rolling on the ground laughing. I thought maybe Canned Beer was just replying really quietly, but no, when I asked Kid 1 he reported that CB had in fact not replied. I would understand the silence if Kid 1 were constantly hanging around the border between the gardens, and constantly asking stupid questions, but he really doesn't do this. He likes to try to strike up a little conversation now and then, but not so often as to be a nuisance. The thing that really gets me going is that CBGF may or may not be pregnant. She appears to be, yet she often smokes and drinks canned energy drinks. I can't imagine this is so great for a fetus, but it certainly doesn't rule out a fetus. If there is a kid in there, I hope he or she is a mute, because these people do not speak to or listen to children and certainly don't seem to be able to handle screaming kids too well. Ah, maybe that's what set them off, the screamfest that started when we got to the garden. Whatever it was, I could just feel the cold, bitter waves of hate rolling over into my garden this afternoon. I need to head out there more often on weekday afternoons, it's kind of fun to drive them away. It certainly took no effort, we just showed up!

I'm glad I'm not taking this whole gardening thing too seriously, because if I were, I'd be losing my mind. Fortunately I'm just along for the ride and the pettiness and all the vegetables are pretty amazing. So are the friendliness of some of the gardeners and the all out peculiarity of the garden colony. Somebody built a tree house and what do the others call it? The shooting stand. One guy started to build a unique cabin with two levels, but it still fits the small size requirement, so it's pretty funny. Everybody calls that the skyscraper.